Child Poverty and Child Well-Being in Italy

Child poverty matters directly as children constitute a large share of the population and indirectly for future individual and national well- being. Measures of child poverty are dominated by incomepoverty, although education and well-being are now often included. Data in the most recent international and EU reports indicate that Italy performs worse than most developed countries in this respect, in spite of the extremely low fertility rates. The purpose of this report is to examine several dimensions of relative and absolute poverty among children in Italy in a comparative framework and explore the factors underlying this, which are mainly related to the nature of the labour market, and the structure of the welfare state. The two main groups of households at risk of poverty are single parents (especially if women) and large families with three or more children. The high child poverty rate in Italy is partly determined by the combination of rigidities and limitations of labour market opportunities especially for women (particularly mothers because of limited childcare services and the low support for households with children). The analysis of the impact and effectiveness of recent policies show that public intervention did not have a significant impact in reducing child poverty rate.